rubinann17005 — Announcement

Rubin Digest 17 February 2017

17 February 2017

Project News

New drone images from the summit of Cerro Pachón show the rapid progress of LSST construction. You can see the circular lower enclosure with the telescope pier inside, the elevator shaft, and the (long rectangular) service building. The third image shows white siding going up on the lower enclosure and progress on the foundation for the Auxiliary Telescope. Inside the facilities building windows are appearing, drywall is going up and cable trays are being installed. The summit team has one month to get ready for the start of Dome installation. Telescopes in the background are (L-R) SOAR, and Gemini South. Thanks to LSST Telescope & Site Assembly, Integration, and Verification (AIV) Manager Jacques Sebag for obtaining these pictures during a recent visit. 

A paper entitled "The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope as a Near-Earth Object Discovery Machine” by Lynne Jones et al. has been submitted to Icarus, a peer-reviewed journal devoted to Solar System research. This completes an extensive study, also submitted by the Project to NASA, of LSST’s capabilities as an NEO/PHA discovery machine. The study confirms that LSST, deployed with its baseline cadence, is capable of making a major contribution to retiring the risk of asteroid impact.

Personnel News

Corey Eichelberger has joined the Data Management subsystem as part of NCSA's Network Engineering and Research division; he will devote a portion of his time to supporting networking for LSST systems being constructed and operated at NCSA.  Corey comes to LSST from the University of Northern Iowa where he served as a Network Engineer for 2.5 years. 

Corporation News

Applications are now open for the LSSTC Data Science Fellowship Program! The LSSTC DSFP is a supplement to graduate education in astronomy, intended to teach astronomy graduate students essential skills for dealing with big data. To learn more about the program please visit our website; direct link to application is here.   Application deadline is March 15, 2017. 

Upcoming Meetings with LSST Involvement

(those with asterisk* are LSSTC funded):

2017

February 27 – March 2: Detecting the Unexpected: Discovery in the Era of Astronomically Big Data*, STScI, Baltimore, MD

March 6 - 8: LSST Joint Technical Meeting, Glendale, CA

March 13 - 15: Blind Analysis in High-Stakes Survey Science: When, Why, and How? *SLAC; Menlo Park, CA

March 20 – 23: ASTRO: Time Series Analysis for Synoptic Surveys and Gravitational Wave Astronomy, International Center for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS), Bengaluru, India

April 3 - 5: LSSTC F2F Board Meeting and Hill Visits, Washington, DC

April  6 & 7: AURA Management Council for LSST (AMCL) Meeting, Washington, DC

April 3-7: LSST DESC Hack Week *, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

May 1 – 3: NSF Large Facilities Workshop, Baton Rouge and Livingston, LA

May 1 – 5: AURA Board and Member Representatives Annual Meeting, Tucson, AZ

May 12 - 13: LSST Detection of Optical Counterparts of Gravitational Waves*, BNL.  Contact Morgan May for additional information. 

May 22 – 25: Infrastructure for Time Domain Science in the Era of LSST, Tucson, AZ

May 31 - June 2: Supernovae:  The LSST Revolution Workshop *, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL

June 12 – 16: Getting Ready for Doing Science with LSST Data,* IN2P3 Computing Center, Lyon, France

July 10 - 14: DESC Meeting, Dark Energy School, and Hack Day*, Brookhaven National Lab

August 14 – 18: LSST 2017 Project & Community Workshop, Tucson, AZ

November 7 – 9: AURA Workforce & Diversity Committee, La Serena, Chile